SOLO ADVENTURESS IN MANILA

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STRANGER IN THE KITCHEN

I’ve no role model in the culinary department. My Ma never counted cooking as one of her strengths. Orphaned at five, she had no mother to teach her how to navigate the mysteries of the kitchen.

Between the time Ma married at 16 to the day she died half a century later, she mustered less than a handful of dishes – pork in tamarind broth (“sinigang”), beefsteak, “adobo” and “tinola”. Everything else she fried or boiled to feed Pa and me.

I begged Ma to learn to preserve fruits so I can pass the cooking part of my Home Economics class with flying colors and make passable “leche flan”, which never held up its shape but which I gladly slurped off before it can even leave the pan.

Still, Ma’s kitchen remained a toasty little refuge with an L-shaped wooden counter more often lined with a dozen lounging cats than with pots and pans (our dozen dogs curl up on the floor). If I forget to haul in my fave cat Midnight in my bedroom at night, he’ll sulk and hide behind the warm stove till morning.

However, the prospect of sweating it out for hours, chopping, dicing, slicing, mixing things, following complex directions then washing a mountain of pots and pans and utensils made me avoid kitchens at all cost, from my teens (when I flew from the nest at 15) to adulthood.

I simply don’t have the time to cook!

So, I was delighted when Chef Ernest Gala taught me to prepare Carbonara Pasta in three minutes and Chicken Pie in five.

And I was completely awed when I walked in his culinary school, complete with individual cooking stations and Samsung Smart Ovens that can do anything, from veggies, cakes and cookies, from entrees to main dishes and desserts.

The Samsung Smart Oven microwaves and grills simultaneously. It also microwaves and bakes at the same time. It even defrosts, microwaves then grills.

Sauce: ¼ cup each of Mayonnaise and Cheese Pimiento, 1 can Campbell’s Cream of Chicken Soup

Topping: ¼ cup each quickmelt cheese and chopped bacon.

Procedure: Combine Mayonnaise, cheese pimiento and chicken soup in a microwave bowl and mix well. Cover with cling wrap. Put in Samsung Smart Oven. Set to Microwave mode at 600W for two minutes. Remove cling wrap and mix well. Return cling wrap and put back the sauce in the Smart Oven. Set to Microwave Mode at 600W for 30 seconds to one minute.

Remove and mix with cooked pasta. Toss. Top with quickmelt cheese and bacon.

Procedure: Put the filling in 4 ramekins. Top with mashed potato and then add one cup quickmelt cheese over the whole thing. Put chicken pies in the Samsung Smart Oven. Set in Microwave+Convection Mode and time for 4 minutes. Press Grill Mode and time 1 minute. Remove and top with fresh basil.

Note: To cook chicken, put 500 grams pounded chicken breast in an oven-proof dish. Top with ½ cup oil or melted salted butter. Set Samsung Smart Oven on Microwave+Grill function and time for 4 minutes. Invert chicken and cook the other half using the Microwave+Grill function for another 4 minutes. Allow to cool then chop.